


Visions

by buhwhydoe



Category: Ancient Greek Religion & Lore, Lore Olympus (Webcomic)
Genre: Dread Queen, Dreams, F/M, Visions, enlightenment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-06
Updated: 2020-10-09
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:27:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26858929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buhwhydoe/pseuds/buhwhydoe
Summary: Hades begins to have peculiar visions that unsettle and consume him. They cause him to feel peculiar and confounding senses of satisfaction, arousal, and total confusion.  Slowly, over time, more images are revealed, only adding to his growing frustration. When he finally understands what these visions mean, he realizes what (or rather, who) they have been pointing him towards this entire time.
Relationships: Hades/Persephone (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), Hades/Persephone (Lore Olympus)
Comments: 14
Kudos: 76





	1. 1

They had begun sometime in the long nights that followed that fateful encounter—a loathsome party, a miserable drive home, a surprising guest, and quiet tenderness in the ungodsly hours of the morning. Soon after came the images that left him breathless and painfully alert, like no dreams had ever haunted him before.

Was haunting a word appropriate enough? The dreams of his father certainly were. But these visions were unlike anything that had wandered into his dreamscape in his lonely two-thousand years of existence. It was almost like clockwork, once his eyes had opened—a rush of white-hot, excruciating yearning for something that transcended all he knew, followed by a spike of aroused apprehension. Once he had awoken, it took minutes for his breathing to smoothen, and with him staring up at his swirling, undulating ceiling, the ritual was completed with a searing heaviness in his stomach, accompanied with an onslaught of confusion and listlessness that would tail him for days to come.

At first the visions had been mere blinks, flashes, glimpses of incomprehensible images. Black and white, as though they meant to taunt him with their obscurity. The first few had been mere sensations—a wave of pride and satisfaction that he had never felt in his life. Then, these feelings had brought with them the glimpses he had been given. A pointed, black adamantine spike one night. Black fingernails next, like elegant talons, gripping the handle of some unrevealed weapon. Dripping with ink? Mortal blood? He squinted, but the stubborn grayscale of the vision eluded any further understanding. Sharpened fangs, glistening silver, as laughter poured out of some blurry mouth. He struggled to hear, but it felt as though he were underwater. Every sense was muffled, distorted, numbed.

It felt like the Fates were toying with him. Why give him undecipherable visions, of feelings and images so unfamiliar? And even worse, lacking any color that could help him even begin to dream of putting these puzzle pieces together. He asked Hecate, one night in his office, and even she could only raise her eyebrows. He failed to notice, however, the fleeting quirk in a corner of her mouth. Truly, she knew just as little as him, but for one such as she, the significance of these fleeting symbols meant that something big was coming. Something chaotic, and wonderful, and dreadful.

*********

After a month, Hades shot up in bed, clutching his sheets about him in terror. The first color, the only color, had finally shown itself. The black-nailed talons majestically gripping the long, formidable weapon dripped with a glorious red, unmistakably the color of mortal blood. For the first time, he could smell something in his vision—the overpowering, heady, nauseauting stench of metallic mortal blood, mixed with a subtle aroma of the fertile earth after a thunderstorm. Was this some ancient deity who wanted to threaten him? Inundate his realm with wrath?

He went to Morpheus, who gave him the bone-chilling verdict that he could do nothing, because these were not dreams. Hades had paced, not understanding, until Morpheus reluctantly explained that he was not dreaming and instead was afflicted by a series of visions that happened to take place while he was asleep. Fantastic, just another layer to the enigmatic images that had slowly and surely captured his waking hours as well.

It would be another week before the next vision, this one even more upsetting than the last. He noticed the darkness of his realm, the distant lights like stars, but before he could relax and appreciate the comfortingly familiar landscape, they had appeared. The eyes. The large, round, wrathful eyes, the same brilliant hue as the blood of the last vision. He stared at them for what felt like an eternity, his heart pounding in some desperate, feral, inconsistent rhythm that made him feel the most alive and yet close to death that he had ever been. It had taken him longer than usual to recover his breathing afterwards, and had taken to swimming idle, disturbed laps in the pool until his phone told him it was time to get ready for work.

*********

The week that followed was excruciating. He had gone to bed each night with an equal sense of hope and dread, wondering if the visions would choose that night to present themselves again. He was sure at this point that he could piece together the pieces, if only he was given some kind of unimaginable key. That his utter, blind confusion would wash away with a single drop of knowledge.

The next vision took him completely by surprise, in the middle of a Sunday morning watching TV with the dogs. It felt as though he had been yanked through the ether and into some realm of nothingness, where all his sensations were afforded to him. Somehow, he knew he had to find something—someone—and began walking. He was stunned to find that as he walked, a hand was leading him, the dark nails raking arousing trails along his wrist. Beyond the wrist, however, was only a blur of light, still only shades of black, gray, and white in this limbo of color. Strange as it was, Hades felt that familiar blanket of satisfaction and pride drape over him like a mantle, and he trusted this unknown, torturous being that had plagued his thoughts for weeks on end. Somehow he knew that if he had to, he would follow this shadowy figure anywhere.

It was milliseconds before the vision snapped away as suddenly as it had started. He was startled to see a flash of silver fangs, laughing muffledly, and the black talons had moved to his abdomen, raking his skin with an excruciating pleasure, and lastly, the adamantine spikes that he had never been able to make sense of. But suddenly he saw them as they were—like rays of a black, dreadful sun, above the silver fangs, crowning this dreadful, wondrous being whose visage and form he still could not see.

This time Hades opened his eyes calmly, differently, and he could hear himself breathing deeply. Not a second had passed since the vision had snatched his consciousness away. It felt like slowly, methodically, the puzzle pieces were raining around him. He only needed some figurative broom to gather them up, and put them where they belonged.

Tomorrow, tomorrow he would tell Hecate that his Queen was coming.

*********

Once he had finally understood a little of the visions, they seemed to disappear completely. He didn’t know whether to be disappointed or relieved. Hecate suggested that he could be both, but he only looked morosely out his window. Who knew how much longer he would have to wait? The horrid possibility of a vision leading him on, a few centuries—or worse, millenia— before the chance to find her... Were the Fates trying to dissuade him from feeling a certain, tremendous way about his new friend? Were the visions some kind of glorified, long-winded way of warning him that nothing further would come of his friendship with Persephone, despite the way she made him feel?

He could only curse his stupidity and blindness when the visions finally came again, one last, soul-rending time.

It had come sometime during the tumultuous months that followed that fateful twilight of pelting rain, rage, passion, and butterflies. A vision of red, wrathful eyes, boring holes into his very being. A dreadful, glorious, heart-stopping laugh framed by the most elegant of fangs. A hair-raising touch of sharpened nails, raking a familiar path over his skin. The glorious adamantine crown, glittering and glistening like pitch-black oil poured over a riverbed of black, razor-sharp onyx. And finally, from the overwhelming, smoky obscurity of the world around him, a single, blinding ball of light. A glowing pink butterfly, that flitted easily and effortlessly through the throbbing red atmosphere of this strange world. It flew so gracefully, so naturally—so matter-of-factly—that he finally understood.


	2. 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hades finally gets to see the Queen from the visions—and oh, is it glorious indeed.

It would be a few years, before the Queen from his visions transcended from memory to manifestation. And when she finally, finally, after aeons, stood before him in all her glory, Hades felt his heart stop beating for one incalculable eternity. He struggled to take it all in, knowing that this momentous occasion would be one he needed to commit to memory, to close his eyes and see clearly whenever he wanted to.

It was a difficult task, to memorize each curve and angle of her dreadful, magnificent, glorious being—the resplendent waves of boundless tresses that cradled her regal, unmatched crown; the lips that glistened with the luster unparalleled by any pearl in existence; the formidable scythe she wielded, royal as her title, savage as her beauty; the black dress that clung to her like a second skin, moving and undulating with every divine breath she took; and finally, the passion and wrath in her blood-red eyes, piercing into the depths of his every memory, seeming to pin him in place and reach smoothly into his chest to wrap a chilling, white-hot, eternal hand around his faltering heart.

When he finally remembered how to breathe, and his heart resumed beating, all he could do was tremble. In disbelief at his good fortune; in understanding, finally, of why he had endured two millenia of loneliness, why he had never married or attempted to love a being beyond the confines of his bed. Here, before him, was proof that the Fates had chosen him as their champion—living, eternal proof that everything had its reason and season. For what better explanation to present, to explain the obscurity that had been his life leading up to this blinding moment of utter bliss and overwhelming devotion? Persephone was his Queen, his Queen was Persephone—and would be, for eternity.

He was weeping, he realized belatedly, as hot tears of sublime joy ran down his face. He could only watch in dumbstruck awe as his glorious Queen reached out an exquisite finger to trace the paths of silver tears that had fallen in her honor. He could only gasp with disbelief as she brought her finger to her mouth and licked it, her perfect lips and fangs parting for a tongue so sensuous that his knees felt weak. He watched, trembling, as she tasted the rare tears of his joy, as her crimson eyes flashed with desire. Desire. She wanted him, as he wanted her. She needed him, as he needed her. She loved him, utterly, completely, endlessly, as he loved her. He knew now, more than ever before, that she had been born, fated, to be his balance, his partner, his equal in everything.

With a hair-raising shriek that tore the air, she bloomed. He breathed in the heady aroma of musk and flowers, fresh grass and ripening fruit, and rich, storm-drenched soil. Before his wide eyes, his wife, his Queen, his equal, wailed in what he could only describe as the music of birth and rebirth, resounding through the cosmos like a sucker punch to his gut. Her hair rippled, turning to petals; her eyes beamed with a brilliance that made his mouth even drier. From her delicate shoulder blades sprung branches that rapidly blossomed into wings, spreading over her shoulders to adorn her in a raiment of fertile green leaves bedecked with a thousand floral blooms.

And then she was silent, breathing hard and staring at him in return, and he realized that the absolute pull of her fearsome, dreadful, radiant, primal form had called to his. His hair rippled, glowing in an unseen wind; his fingers talons as savage as hers; his teeth feral fangs; his eyes shining white-hot with the burn of a thousand stars. He heard a howl, drawn-out and bone-chilling, and realized it had come from his constricted throat. 

Here he stood, before a Godess who was in every manner and way his equal—his Goddess, his Persephone. And the King, glittering like the infinite cosmos, knelt before her and bowed. He looked up at her, words unspoken hanging heavily, meaningfully, in the thick air between them. He knew then, as she did, that they would worship each other, and only each other, for the aeons to come.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, I decided to do a second chapter after all! I really enjoy fleshing out my imagination of what it would be like for Hades to finally see Persephone in all her multidimensional glory. So here it is!

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everyone, this is my first fic for the LO fandom. I wrote it because I’m quite obsessed with the image of Persephone as Dread Queen and I wanted to envision how Hades might react if he saw the same thing the Fates let us see when they played the tape of her as Queen. However, I sort of decided against writing his reaction to seeing the whole thing, and instead chose to focus on him putting together the puzzle pieces himself.


End file.
